EP:206 From Addiction to a Life of Purpose with Timothy Murray

What does it take to truly overcome addiction, to find a purpose, and create a meaningful life after military service? Join me, retired Major John Donovan, as I host a deep and enlightening conversation with Timothy Murray, a stalwart in long-term recovery advocacy.  Timothy takes us through his personal journey, from the darkness of addiction to the newfound purpose that has transformed his life.

Bravo Zulu House

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to Veterans for Recovery, a podcast that unpacks all things recovery within our extended military family. Join your host, retired Major John Donovan, a noted author, lecturer and person in long-term recovery from substance use disorder, as he and his guests will break down current trending topics and research, along with all things recovery related to increasing recovery resilience and recovery capital within our veteran and service member communities. Now here's your host, major John Donovan.

Speaker 2: 0:38

Good day everyone, and welcome to another episode of Veterans for Recovery. This is a podcast that looks at all things pertaining to our veterans, service members and their families who are in recovery or seeking recovery. I'm John Donovan, a retired Major of the US Army, and I'm a person in long-term recovery. With me today is my guest, timothy. Today, timothy and I will explore what recovery means, how it impacts our lives. Timothy, welcome to the show and thank you for being with me today.

Speaker 3: 1:10

Well, good morning Major. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:13

It is indeed a wonderful morning, as a Broadway musical once said oh, what a beautiful morning. Hey, timothy, you are a person who is in recovery. Yes sir, yes sir. If you talk about your recovery experiences and any programs that you practice in recovery, you may or may not want to use your full name. I will leave that entirely up to you. So do you prefer that I just use your first name or are you comfortable with your full name?

Speaker 3: 1:49

Very comfortable with my full name. I've learned that all PR is good PR.

Speaker 2: 1:53

So again, my guest today is Timothy Murray, and to begin with, Timothy, let's launch on you one of my favorite subjects, and maybe one of your favorite subjects too. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your education and your profession.

Speaker 3: 2:15

Well, since we only have three hours, I'll give you the short version. The first would be is that I'm an alcoholic. The second is that I am a grateful recovering alcoholic due to Arnold, father Martin Fleming, and my journey to sobriety is very similar to many others. So I tend not to want to focus on the drunkologue, other than to mention that I am a member of the St Paul FBI and CIA, which, of course, is the full-blooded Irish and the Catholic Irish alcoholics.

Speaker 3: 2:54

Father, colonel, father Fleming saved my mind. He saved my life and my mind of Freudian slip, as we know that the main problem of an alcoholic centers in his mind rather than his body, and I learned that from men in our 12 step group, as well as Colonel Father Martin Fleming. When I was with Father about six months, father was the Army General Chaplain of the US Army. He reported to Colin Powell and he liked to mix his Catholic and military terms. And he sat me down one day and he said, tim, I've received inside word that my transfer papers to purgatory are being processed and I'd like you to join me on a mission to roll out a series of faith-based sober houses. What do you think? And, as you may know, if you think it's difficult to say no to a priest, try saying one that's also our Colonel. So that began a journey. Now, 13 years later, running a series of sober homes in the Twin Cities and now down in southern Minnesota, and, most notably, we have the highest post-treatment recovery rate in the nation, at 71%.

Speaker 2: 4:19

Wow, timothy, that is incredible and I love the military tie-in, of course, as a retired member of the Armed Forces. But one of my favorite chaplains, john Morris, would often use those very military kinds of analogies when he was giving a sermon or a homily and it just seemed to hyper-focus the entire audience because of course we're all soldiers listening to this. And then when you bring in higher headquarters or the higher power, as we might describe that person, and share that in a faith-based context, it really resonated with the audience. I love that. So you got this commission from the Colonel. What gave you passion to do this? I did. That resonate with you.

Speaker 3: 5:22

That's a very good question. I've learned that. Why is neither a business nor a spiritual question. What I do like to focus on is what?

Speaker 3: 5:30

So at that time, I was 50 years old and what I was was a broken man spiritually, emotionally, financially, psychologically. And what Colonel Father Fleming gave me, I think, is the greatest gift that can be given to any human being, and that is the gift of purpose. Father gave me a purpose, and, as random and as haphazard and as serendipitous as many of us may think our lives are, in one galvanizing moment it became crystal clear to me that, for the first 50 years of my life, I was being perfectly prepared for the mission that Father was going to set me upon In my role as executive director and chief running mouth of this organization. You know, my purpose is to help men achieve their goals of sobriety, and therefore it became very easy for me to decide what do I pursue and what do I say no to. I learned that no major who knew this is a complete sentence, and so my purpose in life became extremely clear, and at first I was not really wild about this idea of helping drunks, and because you know back when I used to be who. I thought I was major, I was a big deal, and if you didn't think so, just ask me. I would have told you.

Speaker 3: 7:16

And so I asked Father. I said, father, if you give me one really good reason why I should do this mission that you're asking me, I'll do it. And of course he did. He just paused and he said Tim, I would like you to do unto others as I have done unto you. Don't you just hate it when somebody puts you in a box like that fast? So it's been nothing but an absolute joy, and I find myself having boundless energy. I have literally not had a bad day in 13 years, as ludicrous as that may sound, and I think that, to the best of my ability, I'm operating in the 12 step context of the 11th step, which is I am attempting to every day align my will with what we might understand to be God's will, and that results in marching through life like a hot knife through butter.

Speaker 2: 8:16

And that's beautiful and I can attest and you have been an inspiration and hope for me because I have worked with a little bit with you on a couple of projects, and I love your ability to lift and shift, not get sucked into the quagmire but really rise above it. And if I can summarize what I have seen and witnessed, it is we're running a roadblock here. This is God's message to me that this is not the right path. Thus, and therefore I need to focus my energies in a different direction and see where that goes. If doors or windows open on that path, I interpret that as God's will. If doors and windows are shut on that path, I need to lift and shift to yet another path. And that is the first summation of the philosophy.

Speaker 3: 9:15

It is. Father used the term inspired in reflection, confirmed in action. So in our 12 step program that just simply means hey, I've got an idea of what I think I'm supposed to do, and many of us have a lot of ideas, major, many, many ideas. Some of them are actually good. So inspired in reflection means asking what is it? That is your will.

Speaker 3: 9:47

For me Now, confirmed in action simply means follow the traction. So for me it's simply okay. You know, in an extreme example, if I thought that God's will for my life was to be a standup comedian, somebody might go yeah, you're not that funny, murray, but if that was what I was supposed to do, we would test that by seeking confirmation or getting traction. So the easiest way to do that would be go to open mic three or four weeks in a row and probably after several nights, if not three or four, there'd be a clear indication from either the tomatoes that are getting thrown at me or the standing ovations as to whether or not I'm gonna get traction in pursuing that. So what I've done, to the best of my ability, is I just simply followed the traction, particularly when I'm dead set, confident that this is absolutely the right thing to be doing and I get attached to an outcome when I begin to bump up against myself.

Speaker 3: 10:50

Usually, you know, our big book says to pause when agitated, to pray, to pick up the phone and call somebody or ask somebody for help, and then, most importantly, go find somebody to help and just wait. And what I found is that the obstacle that I was bumping into either grows enormously. So it becomes very clear that the answer is not over or under, but around. So now the only decision is do we turn right or do we turn left? Or sometimes what was perceived as an obstacle within 24 to 48 hours dissolves and all of a sudden we can now proceed. We just needed a pause for timing purposes.

Speaker 2: 11:36

Well said, well said indeed, and there was something that you said a couple of minutes ago that made me think of Victor Frankel. You're probably familiar with man's search for meaning, and you mentioned that this project gave you purpose. That is so true with our military audience, especially for the guys and gals that I see who are new in recovery, because for so long being attached to the armed forces, they had purpose, they had direction, they had a lot of direction. Right, there was an NCO or an officer who was probably constantly telling them what to do. But also, on a spiritual level, you are connected to something that is bigger than you. You're involved in an operation, you're involved in an organization, and the stuff that you do matters. It matters on a large scale in terms of the success of the mission, but it also sometimes can resonate and have purpose in terms of mission urgency, to be real blunt that the stuff that I do may cause others to live, or, if I don't do my job, it may cause others to become injured or worse. And so there is this incredible sense of importance in the work that they do, and I find that oftentimes being able to lift and shift that kind of idea or that philosophy to recovery can be instrumental and monumental in terms of redirecting that passion to their new life in recovery. That I'll often say if you wanna be successful in recovery, just devote as much time and energy as you did to the problem and you will be 100% successful.

Speaker 2: 13:46

Joe Walsh, who is a Gold Star family member and for our listeners who may not be familiar with that term, a Gold Star family member is a family member who had a mother or father who perished in the line of duty and Joe Walsh, the famous guitarist from the Eagles, is a Gold Star family member and he's also a person in long-term recovery. I just recently was listening to an interview with him where he said for a while the alcohol was working for me, but then eventually I ended up working for the alcohol. And when we can lift and shift that purpose, as Victor Franco will say, search for meaning, that meaning that gives me purpose and direction. It makes our life so much fuller and really sets a person up for success in their recovery journey. Now, having said all that, you are working with military members, you have a task, you have a purpose in regard to our service members and veterans. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that, timothy.

Speaker 3: 15:02

Certainly and I like your term lift and shift. In my lexicon I tend to use the word pivot, and either of those is a good description of what we have now calling Bravo Zulu House For your listeners. They may be interested in looking at bravozuluhouseorg, and bravozuluhouse is an all military sober house that will be open in late 2024. And it was born out of precisely this need to lift and shift. During COVID, trinity sober homes, which is the organization that we named, honoring father Fleming's faith background, we had expanded to four buildings with 50 total beds, all beautiful residential homes. We had served over 400 men, but our primary client or referral source was Hazelden.

Speaker 3: 16:11

And during COVID, that referral dream dried up to basically a trickle and we became embarrassingly aware that we had over relied on one single referral source for 90% of our referrals. Shame on us from a business standpoint, you know, a single customer dilemma. And so we set about crying to learn well, who else has problems out there, with sobriety, that we could help. And I'm also a little bit embarrassed to say that it took me 13 years to come back to the beginning, which is, I'm pretty sure, of father Fleming, who passed in 2018 at the young age of 92. If I would have gone to him and said, hey, you know, we've got this challenge, he probably would have just said, tim, what are we doing for our military brothers? Instead of took me six months and some strategic planning and a bunch of outside people to help me see that the root cause, we believe, of military suicides is lack of sobriety.

Speaker 3: 17:24

And some people wrinkle their nose or raise an eyebrow at that and the logic goes something like this the vast majority, as you know, of the men who are in, women who are committing suicide on a daily basis Virtually all of them, have some form of PTSD or other mental health related illnesses, and the VA has their own numbers that shows that 70 to 90% of all veterans suffering with PTSD self admit to abusing drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism to deal with their PTSD.

Speaker 3: 17:59

So to us it seems like, well, wait a second.

Speaker 3: 18:03

If you're trying to help a veteran with PTSD counseling while they're drunk or high or hung over, or all three, would appear to be a effort in futility for those of us who have been drunk or high, hung over, or all three, and that maybe we should try to get these guys sober first and then help them. So I started poking around and only to find out the virtual paucity or dearth or lack of sobriety programs in and around our military health services. So, knowing what father would want me to do, he would rather he most likely if I were to mimic what he would say would be something like so, tim, are you going to complain about it or are you going to do something about it? So we decided to do something about it. So we have now created Bravo Zulu house. It will be the first of its kind in the country where we will be addressing for military veterans coming out of treatment, simultaneously addressing their PTSD with mental health related services, while also assisting them in finding a new life in sobriety in a sober house environment.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Incredible, incredible. I love the notion about complaint. I just read recently complaining is not an action step. A mentor of mine used to say John, you can bring me a turd, you can put it on my desk, but you damn well better bring a shovel. It's not enough to just identify problems. You got to identify solutions. It sounds to me, tim, that that's exactly what you're doing is identifying a solution.

Speaker 2: 20:05

Now we often talk about you and I offline the nexus between homelessness, suicide and substance use disorder. They do seem to be connected. We see a vast majority of our veterans who are homeless suffering from substance use disorder. We see a vast majority of our veterans who are successful in their suicides who've had a history of substance use disorder. But I think part of this also goes to something that we often talk about in the area of addiction, and that is the opposite of addiction. Is it necessarily sobriety? It's connection, that with your sober home. That's what you're doing. You're reconnecting soldiers to soldiers. They say that addiction flourishes in isolation. The antidote to that isolation is connection or community. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 3: 21:14

I absolutely agree. If you distill it down, the E equals MC squared version of that is addiction equals isolation, recovery equals connection. That's it. What we've learned is. And to bring this full circle back to a purpose, I'm reading a great book referred to me by my friend, sam Andrews, called Pryb, by Sebastian Younger, on Homecoming and Belonging. What Sam has been helping me better understand is this lack of purpose is really at the root cause of not only veteran homelessness, but it's a path to get to homelessness. The problem is actually much, much bigger.

Speaker 3: 22:06

Think of homeless veterans as the tip of the iceberg, and underneath the water are literally hundreds of thousands of veterans struggling with trying to find a new purpose and a new sense of belonging. Just to put in perspective, john, last year, according to the National Institute of Health, 3 million people went to treatment last year, 3 million. Those 3 million people went to one of 15,000 treatment centers in the US. Of those 3 million people, it's estimated roughly 12% of our veterans. That means 360,000 veterans went to treatment last year. Now this disease, as you know, tends to affect men to women about a 2 to 1 ratio. That means 240,000 male veterans average age 43, went to treatment last year, or said another way, 20,000 veterans men veterans a month, 20,000 a month are coming out of treatment and 20,000 a month will keep coming out of treatment until the horizon, at least for the next 10 years. Based on the current demographics, 20,000 men a month are coming out of treatment. So if you want to know, john, where the ground's zero, where is the root of veteran homelessness, it's the day that that vet walks out of treatment with no place to go.

Speaker 3: 23:43

There are virtually no all military sober houses in this country. I've stopped asking why that is. We're just going to do something about it. There are a few places here and there, but the reality is that none of them take this dual diagnosis approach which says look sure, you went to treatment, but, as we were talking about before, great. Now, 30 days later, you're start grieving sober. And what are we going to do to help these guys? Treatment centers tend to not focus on the emotional, mental health or, in this case, ptsd related, simply because that's not their primary mission. Their mission is a substance use disorder treatment facility. Well, that's great, but the cake's only half done when it comes out.

Speaker 2: 24:32

Yeah, the I fear that sometimes we focus on teaching somebody how to stay sober in a 30 day program and that doesn't necessarily translate when they exit, and I think that might be part of the reason why we see so many times. Well, this is my sixth treatment. This is my seventh treatment. This is my eighth treatment, because I become comfortable with that treatment setting. I know the left and right limits, I know the parameters, I know the talk, I know how to conduct myself, because I've been educated in that. What I haven't been educated in is how to successfully navigate that sober environment. Post treatment and a sober home, I think, would provide those left and right limits, those guardrails, that environment that would be conducive to long term recovery. Your thoughts on that?

Speaker 3: 25:29

Well, sober housing is a fairly common bridge to go from treatment to, let's call it, being mainstreamed in life. For those who are unfamiliar with recovery, most people can relate to the fact that they're either dominantly right or left handed. So, john, which are you, dominantly right or left handed Right? So if I were to ask you to just humor me right now, take a pen and put it in your left hand and piece of paper and just start to write your first name.

Speaker 3: 26:01

What are the feelings that it would be good, yeah. So what are the feelings that come to mind as you're attempting to make that J and then that all? What are the emotions that are going through your mind and what actions are you thinking about taking? I'm inadequate.

Speaker 2: 26:17

I am incompetent. Holy cow, I'm 60 years old and I can't even do a simple task that I learned back in kindergarten.

Speaker 3: 26:29

And you're probably fighting every notion in your body to switch over to your right hand to write it, because you know you can do it that way, because I feel incredibly comfortable with that. So what I try to explain to people who are not familiar with recovery is that's exactly what early recovery is like for most alcoholics and addicts it's learning to right left-handed with no assistance with your right hand, because we know that, while I may be more comfortable Writing with my right hand, that leads me to bad consequences and horrible decisions. And so Now, if we check in with you, john, a year later, if you for some reason had an accident that did not allow you to write with your right hand, how much better do you think you'd be writing with your left hand and how much more comfortable do you think you would be with it?

Speaker 3: 27:18

With concerted effort and daily application I probably would have gotten to the level of first second grader and working on my cursive Probably would call it sassable, um, and allowing you to be functional With communicating in writing, versus the korean Gribble that you probably had in your first week or even first month of writing left-handed Agreed. So again, for your audience, it's probably becomes crystal clear that the metaphor or the analogy is it takes a while, and you know what I learned was and and I know, john, you're a sharp man, so I know you're gonna get this but so I got sober when I was 50. Now here's the tough question you ready? How long do you think it took me to get to be 50 years old? About 50 years bags. See, I knew you could get this one. So if it took me 50 years, so that's 50 years of habituation, 50 years of writing right-handed, 50 years of grooving certain habits. Would a reasonable person actually think that going to a 30 day program Would be sufficient enough to completely undo all of those bad habits and Learn to write left-handed perfectly, so that I could walk out there and go? I'm cured and I'm good? Absolutely not. And yet I got to tell you I was one of those people who thought that would be true. I'll just go to treatment 30 days later. I'm a smart guy. I've gotten a lot of things done in my career. You can do this.

Speaker 3: 29:07

So for many of us we just have to learn, sometimes the hard way. Some people are, frankly, a little bit sharper and they they get off the elevator to higher floor. I was the stubborn Irishman that needed to go all the way to the basement. So when I came upon father Cleming, you know, I was living in my car and had lost all the things that I didn't think I could lose when I first started this journey. And the result has been to build a life based around these 12 steps and I spent three years in sober housing with father. First year was in a different sober house and then the last two years, father would say to you you know, major, the two years that Tim spent with me Were the longest 10 years of my life, and yet it was beneficial, clearly, for both of us.

Speaker 3: 30:01

So what we're attempting to do with Bravo Zulu house is simply create an environment Particularly for our military brothers who might feel uncomfortable going to an all civilians overhouse so they don't need to be with corporate weenie types like Tim Murray. You got his feelings hurt in a frickin staff meeting compared to the combat stuff I've seen. So we want to make sure that those guys have an environment where they feel like they're. You know, we want to basically say welcome home, you belong here, and we're going to help you find a new purpose. And in the meantime, your purpose is the man to the bedroom on the right and on the left Tim, I love that we are coming to the end of our show.

Speaker 2: 30:46

We are coming to the end of our show. Parting thoughts, alibis, what is it that you would like our listeners to walk away with?

Speaker 3: 30:59

Well, first, if you're a person that is struggling with drugs and alcohol, ask for help. There's a lot of us out there who want to help you, and you may be embarrassed by it. For those of you who have a loved one, I encourage you to participate and get involved with alan on. And for those who want to help us, you can go to bravo zulu house dot org and look on the opportunities for helping, which might mean prayer, it might mean support or it might mean sharing your treasure with us outstanding Mr Murray, tim Timothy Murray, our guest today.

Speaker 2: 31:34

What an absolute pleasure it has been talking with you. It was a fascinating Conversation and, to our listeners, thank you for spending a little time with us to learn more about veterans for recovery. This has been a podcast of the coming home Well network. Until next time, be well, think well, do well. This is major john donovan signing off.

Speaker 1: 31:58

You've been listening to veterans for recovery A coming home Well podcast. We value your feedback. Please be sure to leave a review, share and download this episode. We thank our veterans and service members for your service to our country. We thank our friends and families for their support and thank you for listening to veterans for recovery.